Between early courtships where women were dragged into caves by the hair by their special someone and persons with newly defined sexualities swiping right, love underwent many a makeover.
Love definitely went missing for a long period when arranged marriages came into vogue, with real estate overwriting arousal. Perishables like love and lust, it was decided, were best refrigerated in marriages. Love had to sneak around incognito in long coats with upturned collars up motels and down back alleys when husbands were on tour or wives in labour.
Paternity tests and backdoor abortions held hands. Since divorce still spelt the end of the family name, the faithful went on groaning and the unfaithful went on moaning.
Stereotypical sexual roles were lazily assigned to every gender. Male love songs appealed to feminine vanity, as women were thought susceptible to flattery, while female love songs stressed on forever and fidelity, hinting at life sentences.
From actress Sheela visibly shaken by the song ‘arayathi pennu pezhachu poyi’ – a fisherwoman’s infidelity can get her husband drowned – in the film Chemmeen, to Ashokan's poetic serenade in Amaram, vowing ‘azhake nin mizhineer’, Kerala’s backwaters flowed amiably along the human desire of the day.
Behind mankind’s back though, womankind was staging a coup. Fairytales that had princes routinely rescue princesses began to bomb. Fathers reading these out to their tomboy daughters had to tweak the endings, overcome with giggles and some amount of insecurity themselves.
In Love Lives, author Carol Dyhouse speaks about Disney princesses, who ‘are more personable and have more about them these days'. Elsa’s saviour is her sister In Frozen. The macho monosyllabic man sat alone in his rocking chair while the ageing spinster left on the shelf started to party.
From citing matrimony as a career choice, women veered towards the entrepreneurial, till female emancipation peaked recently in the Me Too movement, with consensual the keyword. While some women did mourn the fadeout of manly men, feminists publicly welcomed the long overdue changes in the lust landscape.
Valentine’s Day is an annual jumble sale of outdated romantic rituals. The day a current generation puts on record what this emotion means to them. From an old secret billet-doux soaked in eau de cologne to status (single or otherwise) declarations on social media, couplings have come a long way.
And while ace proudly signifies asexual today, sexless unions seemed the epitome of selfless love once upon a time. After Robert Browning wrote to invalid poetess Elizabeth, ‘I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett’, he swore, ‘I would come when you let me, and go when you bade me. I would be no more than one of your brothers.’ Love used to hint at the timeless.
In the by-lanes of virtual dating apps, haste is a brag. Somewhere in the politics of gender, the geography of love hailed short cuts. While men and women continue to toil on the uphill road of amour, lingering eye contact seems a casualty. One day we may have to relearn how to let our feelings breathe. To take it slow.
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